Most people know about "the terrible twos." But most of the moms I've met agree with me on 2 addendum to the terrible twos: 1) The terrible twos start at age one and a half and 2) age three is much worse than two. (Oops, I may have just exposed a long kept secret to all my childless friends. Forget what this blog says- children are angels! Clocks are ticking.)
Coulson turned four on Monday! And in the past month or so, I have noticed a change in his behavior. He still gets upset quickly, but instead of throwing himself on the floor screaming, he can usually be reasoned with and calm down enough to "use his words" and talk about his feelings. And he can understand the consequences of his actions. Impulse control isn't so great, so understanding the consequences of his actions doesn't quite act as a deterrent yet. I'm not saying we'll never experience tantrums or irrational behavior ever again (ahh, the teen years), but I am hoping that the frequency has slowed. Of course now that he can "use his words," we have to battle rudeness and talking back and interesting variations of "what really happened."
We had a Safari birthday party for him on Saturday with grandparents, cousins, aunt, uncle and a couple friends from preschool. I had so much fun at the party that I forgot to take any pictures. I'm hoping that the grandparents can send me their pics and then I'll post some for all to see. The kids made binoculars and then we all went on an "imagination safari" looking for hand-carved wooden animals that my parents brought back from Africa. The safari was a bit like an obstacle course, designed to occupy the energy level of eight kids aged 1-5. Think stampeding with elephants and jumping over snakes and acting like monkeys. And yet, they didn't seem tired afterwards. They also got to wear animal noses, very important for Coulson. The theme of the party was all about Coulson getting to have an elephant nose. It was all he wanted.
Coulson loves being four. He's probably mentioned turning 4 at least once every day for over a month, and he still talks about it. "Now that I'm four..." he says. Lately, his favorite activity is pulling the mattress half-way off his bed and tumbling or jumping or rolling down it into a pile of blankets and pillows at the bottom. He calls it "playing clowns" and I have no idea what it has to do with clowns. He can do this for hours, as long as someone is with him to watch all his tricks and talk with him (yep, he still hates to be alone.) Charlie also loves this game and it's fun to watch the two of them rolling off the bed together.
He's still into Super Heroes. Spiderman is his favorite, although he doesn't really know much about him because he's never seen anything with Spiderman on TV. I just got some classic spiderman cartoons from the 60s from Netflix that I need to screen before I let him see them tomorrow. He also says that he likes Star Wars and knows all about Star Wars. "Where did you hear about Star Wars?" "I just know. I know all the guys, like 'Olfie' and 'Kiki'." I'm pleased to know that his imagination can more than make up for any real lack of knowledge, he'll do just fine when he grows up. Casey used to say that you don't have to know the answer, you just have to say it with enough confidence and people will believe you. (Interestingly, now that he's a doctor, he doesn't say this anymore - I think that's a good thing.)
He's growing up. He loves to do crafts with me and he's getting interested in coloring (yeah, he's a late bloomer on the coloring) and learning about reading writing. When he wants to "help" it's often more like help, instead of "help." Help is nice because I can get things done faster. (Whereas "help" makes me groan internally because I know it will take three times as long to complete a task.) The other day he helped me put together one of his birthday presents and he did a great job of snapping the little thingies into the little holes. We had to do like 50 of them and by the end, he was quicker at it than I was. He's more interesting to talk with and I'm finding that it's easier to enjoy playing with him sometimes. I think I'm going to like age four.
But guess who's one-and-a-half.
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